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By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 10, 2009 - The two government entities charged with distributing $7.2 billion to expand broadband deployment and adoption said Tuesday they are officially seeking public feedback on how to effectively get the funds to the applicants who should be receiving them. The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service were assigned by Congress in January to administer the program but no awardees have yet to be named. On Tuesday RUS and NTIA said they planned to award the funding in just two rounds to increase efficiency and better accommodate applicants. A statement from the agencies noted that the first round of the grant and loan programs produced about 2,200 applications requesting nearly $28 billion in funding, which is almost seven times the amount of funding available at this time. Though NTIA originally intended to start announcing grant recipients in November, Larry Strickling, head of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said in late October that the program has been falling behind. Currently, the agencies do not anticipate announcing the first broadband stimulus grants until at least mid-December but will then announce more awardees on a rolling...

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By Rahul Gaitonde, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

October 31, 2009 - Finland made headlines earlier this month in declaring that broadband had become a legal right. While this startled some people, the Finns were not the first people to declare this – the Swiss were. Further, in 2003, at the World Summit on the Information Society, a declaration of principles was drafted and signed by a number of nations around the world, including the United States. While Finland is the first nation to declare broadband a right, many nations around the world have developed plans to have universal service within the next 5 years. Finland’s plan is to have 100 percent coverage by 2015 at 100 Megabits per second, but the parliament has yet to officially approve the recommendation. The United Kingdom announced through their Digital Britain plan to have 100 percent coverage by 2012 with a minimum speed of 2 Mbps. Germany has also announced full coverage by the end of 2010: 75 percent of all households are to have speeds of 50 Mbps by 2014, and then 100 Mbps for 100 percent of households by 2018. France also announced a plan to get universal coverage by 2012. All of those plans were established...

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By Rahul Gaitonde, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, October 30, 2009 – At a Friday workshop that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration held on data collection and the broadband stimulus, NTIA announced that the agency will be collecting large amounts of data through the Census Bureau that they would like to make more broadly available. Researchers and other government agencies will also be using the data collected to create new programs and create predictive models, agency officials said. In addition to gathering data from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program applications and from maps funded by the broadband stimulus program, NTIA has been able to work with the Census Bureau to add questions to the Current Population Survey as a supplement. The Current Population Survey is one of the largest national surveys conducted by the Census Bureau in conjunction with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The following five questions are going to be asked:

• Do you/does anyone in this household use the Internet at any location?
• Who is that?
• Do you/does anyone in this household connect to the Internet from home?
• Do you currently access the Internet at home using dial-up or broadband?
• What is the main reason that you do not have high-speed Internet access at home?

At the event...

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By Mercy Gakii, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, October 28, 2009 - Assistant Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Strickling said Wednesday that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will work to apply the lessons from the first round as it moves on to the next phase of broadband stimulus applications. “The NTIA and RUS are finalizing a new request for information that will help us shape the round two process,” Strickling said, testifying before the House Small Business Committee. He also said that at least 15 percent of the applications for stimulus funding came from small and disadvantaged businesses. He added that the agency’s request for information will solicit the public’s views on how the first round worked for applicants and what changes and clarifications should be made for the second round. Strickling touted the role that broadband plays for rural communities, and also for small businesses. “If you are a small business owner without access to high-speed internet, you are effectively operating with one hand tied behind your back,” Strickling said. He said that application process involves giving additional points to applications from economically disadvantaged businesses, and those who have collaborated with them. Jonathan Adelstein, administrator of the Rural Utilities Service at the Agriculture Department, said that 36...

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By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, October 27, 2009 - Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation raised concerns Tuesday about getting broadband stimulus funds out to remote areas and how these areas should be defined. The discussion took place during an oversight hearing on the process of awarding out the $7.2 billion provided to the federal government by Congress to expand broadband deployment and adoption. The agencies responsible for administering the stimulus funds are the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller, D-W.V., both raised concerns about defining remote areas and making sure the funding is getting to the underserved areas in need. Jonathan Adelstein, administrator of the Rural Utilities Service at the Department of Agriculture, outlined the problem in his prepared testimony. “[W]e have seen applicants struggle to comply with the requirements of the “remote” definition for last-mile rural remote programs,” Adelstein said.“We are contemplating major revisions that will continue to target highly-rural areas that are difficult to serve while making it easier for applicants to comply with any new definition we may establish.” He added that they have seen “some applicants encounter...

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By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

Editor's note: This story has been corrected; see below. NEW ORLEANS, September 30, 2009 – The number two official chief of staff at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said Wednesday that there will be changes in the rules governing the broadband stimulus program, and that the government would begin seeking comments on changes in mid-October. Speaking at the annual conference of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors here, Tom Power, chief of staff at the Commerce Department’s NTIA, also said that there were many advantages of consolidating the final two rounds of the broadband stimulus program into a single, final application period. “We are considering eliminating the third round, and going to a second round” for all applications, said Tom Power, speaking at the annual conference of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors here. “We haven’t decided that yet,” he added. “The advantage [of eliminating the final round] is that we might be able to give people a little more time after the NoFA [Notice of Funds Availability] comes out,” he said. “We would love to give more time for folks to prepare applications.” Besides giving individual applicants more time to prepare their packages...

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By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com

The National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) and Rural Utilities Service (RUS) have embarked upon a 30-day period of accepting responses from existing service providers in their reviews of service area classifications, which will includes defining the unserved and the underserved areas for the BIP/BTOP infrastructure applications. The Public Notices can be viewed at: http://broadbandsearch.sc.egov.usda.gov/DefaultARRA.aspx. The Public Notices were published Monday and the response deadline is October 28. Interested parties can view responses to the Public Notices by searching the BroadbandUSA database, based on company name or project location, at: http://broadbandsearch.sc.egov.usda.gov/LegalNoticeFiling/List.Aspx?program=ARRA. According to the web site, existing broadband service providers who respond to Public Notices with multiple proposals will need to file separate responses for each individual service area. This is in order for their existing services to be considered when determining eligibility for funding in the BIP and BTOP Infrastructure applications. All information submitted by existing service providers will be treated as proprietary and confidential to the extent permitted under applicable...

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Editor’s Note: BroadbandCensus.com extends the invitation to broadband observers and experts to offer thoughts on the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s broadband stimulus grant process. Craig Settles, a broadband business strategist, marketing expert at Successful.com, offered this commentary. To submit a commentary, please e-mail: commentary@broadbandcensus.com.

By Craig Settles, Guest Commentary, BroadbandCensus.com

With those words, Assistant Secretary Lawrence Strickling, head of NTIA, enables many applicants and others worried about the NOFA’s incumbent challenge clause breathe a little easier. And for those of us who’ve railed against this potentially destructive clause , there is also a bit of satisfaction for not giving up the fight. Mr. Strickling and Jonathan Adelstein, Administrator for RUS, were responding to questions from the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology & the Internet when Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (CA) pushed for answers about the clause. “I want to make sure there’s competition. If the incumbents can just knock out people because they don’t want any to come in, I don’t really think that’s the way for us to go.” Mr. Strickling gave a reassuring response from both gentlemen and a clearer picture of how this process will run. Applications with infrastructure proposals have proposed to cover...

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